Anyway, here’s my latest doodle animation. I know I say this for all my animations, but I really did have fun making this. The software I used was Pencil for the animation and Magic Pic2Ani to automatically stitch the images into a video, and the music is from one of John Zorn’s amazing Filmworks albums.

One of the things I really like when I post my animations is seeing the recommended videos that Youtube puts alongside mine, and I’ve gotten to check out all sorts of fun amateur and student projects, also along the “doodle animation” theme. For example, today I had fun viewing “Long Story Short“, “Funny Doodle Animation“, and “Artist Vs. Drawing” (and Part Two), which were presented alongside the above. Oh, and this one is not that good, but gets points for the enormous effort it must have taken to use a Magna Doodle as its canvas (and Windows Movie Maker to stitch all the photos together)!

Oh, and speaking of animation, Nefarious, Caitlin, Saira, and I braved the rainstorm which has turned the driveway into a canal and went to see Tim Burton’s 3D Alice in Wonderland. The storyline is a little too Disney for some people perhaps, but visually it really was incredible, so psychedelicly lush and full of the perverse joyful dreams that Burton always showers you with, and does a good job capturing both the original Disney version, and the 1865 book as well. I’m really glad we went, and Nefarious gave it top marks, and perhaps because of the film’s overly sentimental family vibe, she curled up in my lap fifteen minutes into the movie even though we were in a public theatre, and at the end gave me a big hug and said, “that was wonderful… thank you so much for taking me, daddy!”

And any movie that ends like that gets top marks from me as well.

There is no better experience for a father.

I was a little nervous as to how the 3D would turn out, because it wasn’t shot or animated in 3D at all, but instead was faked in post-production, essentially by people tweaking the images to separate different parts of it into “layers” which were positioned at different depths. I wasn’t sure if this would look like a weird sort of pop-up book, like the whole thing was cardboard cutouts, but it totally worked. I know a lot of people write the whole thing off as a gimmick, but I love 3D movies and it totally gets me back into the theatre. Personally I think it adds to ANY movie — it doesn’t have to be something that’s a visual spectacle. Hell, I might even line up for Gigli 3D.

Anyway, tomorrow evening Nefarious goes to visit her mother for much of March Break. I really want to go somewhere with Caitlin — probably staying inside Canadian borders though, to avoid the nightmare, albeit short-lived nightmare (which was part of the nightmare!), we had in Cuba — so I think I’m off to check out the travel deal sites to see what the options are.

Here it is in all it’s glory… POO HAIR!

Have I mentioned how much fun this is?

Caitlin says it’s actually the “super hose, with a tube of toothpaste.”

On my screen/browser the animation is cropped very slightly (the left part of the border — no big deal and irrelevant other than aesthetically), so if that bothers you and you’d rather see it full-screen, or if the embedded animation doesn’t work for you, here’s a direct link.

Today’s bloodwork — just two vials today — was to confirm or rule our Becker’s Muscular Dystrophy, one of the forms that they think I could have (and there are many more possibilities; this one is just a common one so it’s high in the testing queue) — and they seem quite certain that the diagnosis is going to be some form of dystrophy, but they’re not sure yet what sort. It’s also unusual I think for someone to have significant pain issues from MD like I do, but I’m thinking that could be because of the overlap of the CRPS that was caused by the nerve damage after my bone growth surgery. One “interesting” side effect of the nerve damage is that scattered across my leg are “Dim Mak” pressure points, that if they’re touched in a specific way send disturbing electrical shocks through treelike pathways in the leg — presumably the damaged nerve bundle lights up its entire sensor grid — and that sensation sustains for as long as pressure is kept on the point (and then it instantly, like a switch, disappears when the pressure is released — and can be turned back on just as quickly, ad infinitum).

Today I also got the results back from my CT scan — if you recall the photos, you’re probably as surprised as I am to find out that they could see meaningful information in them given what seems to me to be a limited amount of detail. The doctor tells me that in the specific muscles that I’m complaining about he can see that the muscle is breaking down and not rebuilding, but instead being replaced with fatty tissue. I suppose this may explain why when I fall over, it doesn’t really feel like my legs are weak — it feels more like they’re just not there, like they’re replaced with jello… The fall comes as a complete surprise to me, so I think my brain believes that it’s doing everything right, sending the “flex” command just like it should, but because it’s sending the signal to a bunch of zero-strength non-muscle cells, nothing ends up happening and this comes as a surprise to the brain which doesn’t understand why there’s a malfunction. I don’t know though if that relates to reality any more than a witch-doctor’s explanation, but that’s a glimpse into the experience anyway.

Here — below on the swing — is the happy face that gets me through the day, along with Caitlin — and without those two, I would have checked out some time ago. Together they make me treasure the time I have, and give me the desire to gather any waning strength into bundles that I can give them, that we can share. Talking to Saira and talking to my father, do the same, and my family and my extended family of friends, online and off, help a lot as well. I don’t think it’s that everyone helps me through the dark and difficult times (not that help in these times isn’t massively appreciated), no, it’s that they make the good moments even more good, and I think that’s the way I need to look at my life — the many good moments that I have had, and continue to have. Anyway, enough of what I don’t mean to sound whiny especially when I’m saying that I don’t want to dwell on the negative — as I’ve said over and over I love my life, the people in it, and am very grateful to fate for all its gifts.

I was going to do some editing of book text today, but I’m just way too tired (writing this entry was exhausting!) so I think I’ll do some drawing instead… The funny thing is that the reason I’m tired is that I stayed up late drawing, so I worry that I will now go and start a drawing project, and it will again coerce me into staying up late to finish it, and then… well, the whole thing starts over again and the book editing falls further and further behind as my stack of animation test reels grows. Sneaky. I will do my best to shut off my computer, curl up on the couch with Caitlin for Survivor, and then crawl up the stairs to the loft for bed.

Wish me luck!

But this was maybe the most fun one yet to do. I really cut elements fairly short and would have loved to spend more frames — and more time — to the themes explored, especially the opening scene before the head disappears and it’s glowing blue, and the end when the green death ray is firing. Totally fun.

And oops! Caitlin just pointed out that I forget to deal with the shadow, which has a head! So with that and the halo problem, maybe I shouldn’t boast that it turned out well, but I stand by how fun it was.

Most people, Singer says, would choose to save the child rather than the shoes when faced with this immediate and first-hand problem. But then he asks, if you’re willing to do that, why buy the shoes in the first place when an equivalent donation to numerous organizations would save the lives of multiple children? I don’t have a good answer.

I also watched a documentary recently called Why Do Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry (a 1999 classic that won an Emmy so you may have seen it) that was very emotionally moving — although I have to admit that there’s any debate over whether animals are emotional creatures… It just seems so obvious to me that they are. That said, there’s strong evidence for emotion in octopi and other animals where I was in the past assuming a more “mechanical” brain.

Anyway, they were discussing emotional problems in animals, and had a segment about the rescue dogs dealing with the Oklahoma bombing. After a while it became clear that they were not going to be finding any more survivors, and it was just dead bodies. The dogs were trained for this, and when they found the corpses they got their rewards and congratulations, but it was taking a toll on them — they were becoming very depressed, “clinically depressed”, and started not wanting to do the job any more. To help the dogs cope, at the end of the day, the teams would stage a successful find, where one of the humans would hide in the rubble pretending to be a victim, and give the dogs a turn finding someone that was actually alive. This seemed to cheer them up and give them hope that what they were doing was worthwhile, and they perked up and were willing to continue the difficult job.

Anyway, I did another quick animation test, as you can see above, this time at 30fps. I figured out a much faster and more effective way of importing and exporting video from Pencil, and did this super quick and dirty rotoscoping test — my third animation so far. All of this playing with the software is giving me a lot of ideas and some time I really want to tackle a music video. That said, I really should put the drawing tablet aside for a while and do some real work on the keyboard instead!

We left home at lunch time, and I let them stop for Happy Meals — and the little Star Wars toys that came with them — which they ate on the subway ride there, subway rides being something that each of them always looks forward to (McDonald’s too). We got to sit in the very back car which made the trip even better with the good view that comes with that back car.

[Edit/Update: I forgot to tell a story here. When we got off the subway, so did a woman with a stroller. She followed us to the escalator and went to some effort squeezing the big thing, baby inside, on, paying no attention to my "you're not supposed to take strollers here" admonitions. She was right behind us, and when she got to the top, the front wheels of the strollers got stuck in the escalator and the stroller started to twist and flip. An instant later, the grandmother was crushed into the mother and child, and luckily there weren't any more people on the escalator, because the pileup would have certainly fallen onto the baby and pushed it into the escalator until someone hit the emergency stop. After about ten seconds of strolling they managed to extricate the stroller and shot me a dirty look as if to make a preemptive strike on any potential "told you so" comment. Just don't do it again.

But seriously, I hate going out in public because of constant terrible behavior. I find it really hard to be around such ignorance and in another life I'm sure I ran amok from a clock tower or something. But not in this one, don't worry!]

I saw the two of them whispering excitedly (and rudely I suppose) about the guy sitting across from them — who I do not have a photo of so you’ll have to take my word on this — and they came over to where I was sitting and confided that he looked exactly like Fred Weasley from the Harry Potter movies, and to my surprise, they were very correct!

Once at the museum, we twice bumped into guys walking around in huge mascot style dinosaur costumes, but it was a little disappointing because they refused to do anything other than a high five because we were just seeing them in transit as their actual job was to go out on the street and drum up excitement for the museum, which has recently upgraded its dinosaur skeleton area, including among other things, a brontosaurus-type skeleton that’s quite awe-inspiring in its massiveness.

They also paused to do the sandbox dinosaur dig, which I’ve in the past written off as being overly “little kid” (on this trip I totally banned them from all the kids activities, which are a waste of the museum’s space and are better done at home anyway — they’re a lazy cop-out that I wish the museum would eliminate). The guy who was working was amazing — as they uncovered what they found, he explained it to them bit by bit, with an informative and exciting dialogue that kept them inspired and asking questions — and learning. I think though that it’s luck of the draw, as the shy and meek little Asian girl who was his only co-worker was useless, telling not a single fact nor interacting with the kids at all, even ignoring the too-young baby that was doing nothing more than throwing sand on the floor.

The so-called reason we went, and the one that has been most-heavily advertised on TV, and the one that seems to have been the topic of conversation of most people buying tickets, was the rebuilt bat cave. Nefarious has always liked the “spooky” bat cave, so she was totally looking forward to it, but it was a complete let down. On the whole it’s not that different. Mostly it feels more “modern”, with a few more computer screens and an animated ceiling, and cleaner lines, but it didn’t live up to the hype.

[Update/edit: It was dark, and I just did one walk through -- the girls did more -- and having just seen a special on it on the news, I think I may not be giving it a fair shake... The report made it look much more impressive.]

Still fun of course, but the earth didn’t move.

The new “bio-diversity” section on the other hand (which is almost all new material), is absolutely incredible, and if you like “classic” museums — cabinet of curiosity style — you’re going to love it. I definitely did, and it was the section that Caitlin has been pushing me to go see. It’s glass display case after display case, as well as a few interactive screens, and lots of amazing models and taxidermy hanging from the ceiling and even a few live exhibits, and was just incredible, and the girls got as much enjoyment out of excitedly checking out creature after creature (and occasional plant) as I did. Highly recommended and my personal highlight.

The last place we went was the Egyptian area (after going through a “ten commandments” maze and sneaking past a big lecture), and they listened to a brief documentary on hieroglyphics before going into the little tomb room, in which Nefarious ran her hands over all the carvings and translated them, swearing that she could read them, at least in part. Perhaps she will turn out to be a brilliant linguist — but I’m equally happy with the alternative: creative story teller.

Oh, and I shouldn’t say “last”, because as we searched for the stairs and the exit, we entered as room full of nude Roman statues, and the literal quote for the picture below is:

“Look, someone broke off his penis!”

Haha… Anyway, we then stopped for juice for me and hot chocolate for them, and walked down into the subway station where we were told that the trains weren’t running and that we could catch a shuttle bus on Bloor. Rather than doing that — it wasn’t even clear where they were and none were in sight — we just hopped into a cab for the short ride home, with the cabbie ranting about how the bastards never tell you the truth about why the subway is broken and that he is sure someone jumped.

[Edit/Update: All that fun said, I'm so sad that Caitlin is gone until tomorrow afternoon... I sure do miss her already and wish she was back. The support and love she gives me is more than I can do credit in writing.]

But I have never espoused the idea that the news is anything other than a way to sell advertising. They care nothing — or on a good day, little — for the truth, and when you see something on which you are an “expert” and realize how little relation what’s reported as fact has with reality you start getting the scary realization that television news reporting is entertainment and should not be taken seriously.

The last couple days I’ve been working on a new hand-drawn (I count drawing on a tablet as that) animation, in which, after the clouds float off of the full moon, I transform into a werewolf. I’m hugely enjoying the tablet, and how “natural” it feels, and the animation software… and it’s really sucking up my time with the obsession it’s creating!

Nefarious has been watching my progress, and today I showed her the process of building up an animation step by step using an onion skin and she asked me if she could give it a try. Here’s her first creation — I think it turned out nicely and if I hadn’t pried her away with other [real world] games, it would have been much longer that this 13 frame creation I’m sure.

She wants to do more animation this weekend so I told her to do her best to remember her dreams. I have some cut-out animation software as well (similar to what South Park uses) and I thought we could draw some things on paper — make paper puppets basically — andd then create a story with them… I thought of this after she pulled out some drawings that I did for her at the breakfast table something like three years ago that I figured would be fun to pull a Pinocchio on.

Not sure what the plans are this weekend… They just put a new bat cave at the Royal Ontario Museum, which Nefarious loves, so I might go there with the girls since I just renewed my membership anyway. Oh, and I’ll finish off with a Truth — have I mentioned my perfect breakfast? It’s a a few containers of sugar snap peas, blueberries, and some Reeses pieces. Totally delicious. Almost every day this week I have stopped at the grocery on the way home from dropping Nefarious off at school in the morning and picked up this wonderful snack, picking through for the freshest selection.

Although now that I think about it, tomorrow I promised Nefarious a very unhealthy — and rare — treat of a breakfast at McDonalds. For me, the real treat is going out for a morning walk, which legs aside, I quite enjoy. That said, this morning I couldn’t walk, and when I got up, I promptly fell over and landed on the floor. Oops. More for the bruise collection. I managed to get up and then collapsed a second time. Luckily Nefarious was there because I’d promised to play some cards with her before breakfast and I had her get my cane, and I used it to steady myself until I found my strength.

PS. If the embedded animation doesn’t work for you, here’s a direct link.

PS. Speaking of running around studios, this is fun too.

But something that really bothers me is false mourning. When rapper Guru had a heart attack, Xeni wrote what “terrible terrible news” it was and, oh, so so sad. I made this bitter and admittedly mean post which will certainly not make it through moderation…

Is this a friend of yours Xeni? Because you’re increasingly looking like an old lady desperately trying to appear hip. Emphasis on “desperately”. It’s very unflattering, especially as it gets more and more obvious and hamfisted.

I don’t know what’s worse, your post, or the mindless drivel of “oh so sad” me-too comments that always flock around tragedy, as everyone does their best to pull it into their own lives and personalize it, as if hearing about the unfortunate circumstances of some famous person somehow makes you more famous yourself. At best it simply cheapens the tragedy.

I’m honestly trying to be helpful in telling you — you, Xeni, and “you-all” above — to stop before you embarrass yourself even more than you already have. The fall from grace is quite sad in a way. Well, go ahead and disemvowel or terminate the post entirely, since that’s the way of BB.

I know, needlessly mean, and they were well within their rights to censor it.

It’s been my observation that whenever someone dies, even “regular” people, that all of a sudden a pile of people who barely cared about them and barely knew them in life all come out of the woodwork and want to be at the funeral, or post on their blogs about how sad they are. It’s sickening, really sickening. You know, I don’t care who is sad when I die — I care who is happy when I’m alive. I don’t need people to eulogize me, or if they’re on Metafilter, post a “.” for me. I need people to be my friends. This is far more important than them thinking that they are cooler for knowing someone who died (to say nothing of how upsetting all the false mourning is to those dear friends who actually are really broken up — as Saira and I and a few others discovered after the twins drowned). Anyway, people trying to pull other people’s sadness into their own life, to shallowly someone make someone else’s loss their gain, is what’s really terrible.

Other complaints follow.

I was sitting here getting pissed off about something I read online, and Caitlin came in and told me that someone was blocking the car that I had rented for the weekend to go visit out-of-town friends (the truck isn’t really a highway distance vehicle, and the Saab has only two seats) and had stuck a passive-aggressive note telling me to move — or else they’d be calling a tow truck. I wrote my own note in return, which I think read,

This is my spot. I pay extra rent to be able to park here, and in fact, I have the only legal parking spots on this side of the building. So please don’t threaten to have me towed out of the legal spot that I am paying for, that you want to park in illegally!

(And so on)

I stuck it on his windshield, stomped back into the living room, but the stomping helped me let off some steam I guess and I thought better of my actions and walked back outside. I don’t want to be that person. You know, I hate angry old ladies, that when I’m driving and I’m turning across the intersection they’re walking through, they give me the most horrible bitter angry expression, throwing me the maloik, as if I’m somehow plotting to smash into them. Assuming that the world is a terrible place, and responding to it with hatred of your own. Compounding the problem. And I said to myself, I don’t want to be that person.

So I went outside, took the note off and crumpled it up and stuffed it in my pocket as I knocked on the guy’s door. He opened it, looking exhausted, with hair even messier than my own. I told him that I was in my own spot, and apologized for not letting him know, and explained the parking deal here. He’s subletting — illegally as well — and his landlord had misled him about parking, so I told him that normally I wouldn’t need the spot and he was perfectly welcome to use it most of the time. We commiserated a bit about exhaustion and the joy of finding a parking spot in front of your door at the end of a long day — or week in this case — and I’m happy to say that rather than there being two people harboring negativity for each other, I got to know my neighbor a bit better and what could have been a loss all around helped foster friendship and community. So I hope it will be a lesson that I’ve learned that I can apply elsewhere, because boy oh boy am I ever pissed off at all the fools around me.

I realized that I have not posted here in a long time, and as I find myself more and more exhausted by day to day things, I’m afraid that this is low on my priorities. So I haven’t mentioned that when I was driving back from the airport from picking Nefarious up after her last visit to her mother, that the rearview mirror on my Saab fell off while turning on the on-ramp at 100kph. Oops. The good thing is that makes this already skinny car even skinnier which turns it almost into a motorcycle in terms of slipping through gaps in traffic, and traffic in my neighborhood can be very frustrating both because of bad drivers and because of volume. It was made worse by the recent one day long snowstorm. In the short drive back from morning school drop-off, I saw three car accidents. It seems like in bad weather, people are either pathetically dangerously “cautious”, driving slowly and slipping and sliding out of control because they had no idea how to drive in slippery conditions, or the drivers are so angered by the first group, that they drive like maniacs, recklessly fast, both in vehicles capable of the weather and more disturbingly, many that are not. Anyway, being around stupid people who do stupid things is incredibly frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, the Delorean that I was going to buy, which was described as “fantastic condition” and “mechanically sound” was complete junk and basically an eBay scam — which given the too-good-to-be-true price is no surprise. Once I got the car up on a hoist and had a proper look — meaning that I wasted a pile of money on tow-trucks and so on — I saw what a mess it was. Here’s an impartial list of the problems that I saw (and I’m sure there are more): drivers side washer broken, power windows don’t work (and they need to be in Ontario so you can hand signal), rear window defrost broken, right side rear turn signal broken, driver’s door latch broken, right rear swing arm broken, motor mounts broken, rear diffuser missing, front left brake hose damaged, brake master cylinder leaking, steering rack leaking (with some scary play as well on the one side), excessive play in tie rod ends, excessive play in lower ball joints (this you warned me about though), handbrake pads missing, front hood latch broken, steering column held together by pieces of wood (!!!!) and in general under the front dash was a wreck, washer bottle cap broken, wiper blades worn out, alternator belt rubbing on rad hose, A/C belt rubbing on water pump pulley, throttle cable frayed (and seems to have incomplete motion as well, so there is incomplete throttle response), rear boot not locking (hatch misaligned), CV boots need replacement (one is broken completely, the rest are worn to the point of breaking), coolant hoses should probably be replaced (and are currently loose and rubbing on exhaust), rear rotors are rusted out, transmission is leaking, A/C doesn’t work, radio doesn’t work, seems to have some sort of homemade muffler rather than the original, steering leaking, charging light is going on intermittently so there may be an underlying electrical problem there, needs air intake duct, antenna is loose, roof panel is loose, minor damage and dings to body, engine is more anemic than usual and may have additional problems, rear Y of chassis has a bunch of rattling washers hanging off of it on the right side, and the door panels are coming apart and interior missing pieces and in rough shape.

This drawing scribble (the very first one I did testing the functionality of my new Wacom Bamboo tablet), is what I looked like when I saw the car in person.

Of course I am not surprised that this scumbag has relisted the car and has not included any of the problems that I pointed out to him (which I am quite certain he was aware of). I just can’t imagine doing something like this to another person. It’s just awful. I know it happens all the time, but why do people willfully do crappy things to others, crappy things that they don’t need to — I mean, he’s asking half what a Delorean normally sells for, so if he listed the problems, someone would buy it and fix it and be happy. But instead, he’s tricking someone into buying a basket case that they will not be prepared for. Shitty, really shitty. I just don’t understand people.

Speaking of cars, I finally got pulled over by the police in the Saab yesterday, which I had been expecting both because of the missing mirror, and because I don’t have front plates on it — I just don’t have the mounting bracket. The plate is what he noticed. I didn’t end up getting a ticket for it, but instead got a long conversation about different legal questions I was interested in, such as how much discretion there is in car seat laws and the like. Another good example of a situation that could have been a real downer but turned out being friendly because of going into it with the right attitude (both him and I).

The video project that Nefarious and I are doing, recording a video record of me reading all 870 pages of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, is going great. I got a gorillapod, that tripod with flexible legs so you can both stand it up and grip on pipes and so on, and it’s been working really well. The tape is a ton of fun, and I’ve already gotten real pleasure from watching it myself, as has Nefarious, laughing at her pranks and misbehavior and jokes. If it’s such a joy now, I know that she’ll love it when she’s older, and I really do hope that one day she has children that can see it — especially because she occasionally looks at the camera and say, “Now children, I am your mother Ari, and this is your granddad,” followed by some kooky message — how surreal it will be for those kids to have this archive. And I think it’s a wonderful thing that many will enjoy because of the ubiquity of inexpensive recording technology. That said, with the ephemeral nature of digital media, I wonder whether all of these pictures and videos will, for many children, simply be lost. I suppose that’s an argument for Flickr and otherwise uploading your memories into “the cloud”… And on that note, if anyone has intelligent ideas on how to guarantee that media recorded now will still be watchable in the future, I’m all long floppy ears… It’s actually quite a tricky question.

I’ve been editing/transcribing all the old BMEradio interviews, and just loving it. I have such fond memories of the people who took the time to talk to me, and really appreciate the gift that Fakir, and Dr. Stubbs, and all my other “elders” (some of them younger than me) gave me in helping me understand the world with theiir wisdom. And I think there was something special about the audio interviews that isn’t in the written ones as well. I hope that BME, with it’s upcoming “world tour” project, gets back into that. I feel less and less need to do “BME stuff” these days, but I do think it would be a lot of fun to do a podcast of sorts. Anyway, I’ve blabbered on way, way too much this morning and even though I have a lot more to say — seriously a lot –

For example, I was looking at a great set of drawings of different moon bases, and one of the pictures showed an inexplicably green moon, with astronauts lazing about in their space suits on the “lawn”. It got me thinking about the camera that was sent up to the moon before the astronauts got there in person. When they finally did, a year and a half later (or whatever), they opened up the camera and found that it was full of life. Not moon life, but bacteria that had come from the earth and had flourished on the moon. Holy moly. In addition, I was reading about lichen — which is pretty neat stuff, a very beautiful two-part organism that lives in the artic (and everywhere else) — growing on the outside of the space station, totally in space. Wow part two! So I was wondering why we don’t plant gardens on the moon? I would love to see that, and I really wish we would. I’m totally into the Gaia-slash-panspermia notion (and have written about it here in the past, saying that humans are not Gaia’s brain, but are gaia’s reproductive organ) that says that one of our goals should be to spread life throughout the universe, starting with our solar system. It’s an awe inspiring idea to me, even something as simple as a forest of lichen taking over the moon.

– you see, I could go on and on. But I want to get to playing with this Pencil animation software that I just downloaded to use with the Wacom Bamboo, so if that goes well, I’ll post something more amusing in the next few days I hope. I’m not going to bother proof reading any of this so I apologize for what a nightmare of spelling and grammar errors it surely is.

Canada is considering C-384, a brave bill that I strongly support which amends the criminal code to allow doctors and patients a little more control over the way they live the later portion of their life, and what sort of response you can get when you’re lying in a hospital bed, or even a home bed, in pain and unable to do anything but mouth the word “help”, and it’s something that I very much hope passes and if you’re in the position to speak to your representative, I hope you tell them that you support it — and same goes in the US, as this “special comment” video below discusses and lays bare the pain of.

I had told Nefarious that one day perhaps she could show this video to her kids, if she has some, so she took a moment to talk to the future — “Hello children, I am your mother!” and a hilarious monologue telling them all about herself and me. How wonderful it will be for the future’s parents to be able to share such artifacts with their descendants… We move slowly toward the dissolution of the sequential nature of time, and experientially hop around as if it was just another dimension for us to explore.

PS. Famous person I most resemble? Yes, that would be Rasputin.

Of course we took some pictures too which I think turned out well. At least when my illness does me in there are tons of nice pictures that Nefarious can look back on — I was talking to someone recently whose dad died when they were quite young, and they had barely a single photo of him and described the torment of him slipping away as their childhood memories faded… I just ordered myself — and yes, I do seem to be on a self-gifting kick — a little Flip Ultra HD miniature camcorder as well as one of those twisty gorilla tripods that can do stuff like wrap around pipes, and the next book we read (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) I’m going to record us cover to cover. Maybe one day her children, if she has them, will be read to “by me” as well, while they watch their mother as a child enjoy the same book they are. Perhaps it will go on for more generations as well. Thinking about that possibility makes me very happy.

All in all I don’t particularly like living in the big city, and would prefer somewhere less crowded, but one of the many redeeming qualities is that you often randomly bump into events and street festivals like this. Afterward we were considering going to the ROM (the museum) because I just renewed our family membership so it’s “free”, but we ended up waiting, in part because they’re currently rebuilding some of Nefarious’s favorite parts, not least of which is creating a larger version of the bat cave, which she and every other kid I know loves sprinting through (I think it’s not until they’re older and more patient that they walk through slowly enough to appreciate what a beautiful ambiance the place has).

Then Nefarious went crazy and started smashing everything! Just kidding, we found this sculpture that way, honestly. A guy actually came on the PA system and said that because of the warm day and cold night that the ice sculptures were unusually brittle and begged us all not to touch them.

Later in the day, after we got home, Nefarious and I went out to pick up a Wacom Bamboo tablet (which is nice and big and quite inexpensive in comparison to the other full sized ones), and I’ve installed the drivers and software on both of our machines, so she spent a while learning how to use it… The main reason I got it though was because I’ve been seeing so many great flip book and stop-motion animations lately that I really wanted to make some more myself, and I think doing it with the tablet is way better than using paper (and a mouse is too hard to draw with in large volume).

I’ve really been enjoying have two monitors again, but I do sort of feel like I’m “walled in” by them, which isn’t so nice. I think I might build a table arch over the one monitor using 2×10s, so instead of putting the two of them side-by-side I’ll stack them vertically. Other than that, I have still not heard from the guy whose Delorean auction I won, so my worry that the whole thing was a too-good-to-be-true scam of some sort was true is growing. Fingers crossed… But if not, I’m keeping my eyes open for another seventies Corvette.

Click it to amuse yourself with how the filter I mentioned an entry down handles it.

The reason it’s called that is because it’s built around the idea that you have “secret agents” among your opponent’s pieces that occasionally sabotage their game. At the start of every turn you flip a coin. If it’s heads, the turn is played like any normal turn. If it’s tails though, you have a choice — you can either play your turn as normal, or you can activate a “secret agent”, which means that instead of moving one of your pieces, you get to move one of your opponents pieces (any legal move, as if they were making it). If you choose to do this, on their next turn they have the limitation that they can not “reverse” the move you made. They can move the piece, but they can not (in that immediately following turn) move it back to the square it was on before you moved it. The game is also played “full board”, meaning that the goal is to take all of your opponent’s pieces, rather than to capture the king.

This chess variant is interesting because it adds a level of chaos and unpredictability to the game, giving your opponent the ability to mess slightly with your plans. Nefarious picked up on it well, way better than I did I suppose, as she beat me more soundly than I can recall… For the next hour I experienced an emotional state that encompassed both pride and shame.

We were up a little later than usual (late for a school night anyway) as we plowed through the last couple chapters of The Goblet of Fire — all 636 pages — finishing it up, which means that we can finally watch the short-falling film adaptation for Friday’s movie night. I expect Nefarious to be quite exhausted by the end of tomorrow, as she’s spending the day downhill skiing with her school, and then after school, gymnastics. The first time I went downhill skiing I couldn’t walk the next day — a memory which has me wondering whether the problems with my legs may go back further than I assumed, because now that I think about it, I can remember quite a few times where these specific muscles have caused problems.

PS. I just got a new Photoshop filter that I think must have some of the best painting simulation effects that I’ve seen yet. It’s called Virtual Painter and it does some really nice stuff just out of the box using defaults. Here’s a quick example taking the settings that it came with — I’m sure it can produce even nicer results with a bit of tweaking:

That said, today I was looking at the classic Photoshop filters — you know, embossing, charcoal, and so on — and was thinking how terrible and tacky they looked. When we first saw them, they seemed so cool, but now I have to wonder who in their right mind would ever use them. I’m sure things like this painting filter will go the same way with a short wait.